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24 November 2007 @ 03:31 pm
Editing the Future  
I just received advance copies of the February 2008 issue of SCI FI magazine, which won't be officially on sale until December 10. Zachary Quinto's face isn't on the cover due to a Heroes article—he's there because we decided to make our cover feature this time around a sneak peek at the upcoming Star Trek film. It's by far the longest lead sneak peek we've ever done, since the film is still more than a year away.

Also covered in the issue are the movies Cloverfield, The Water Horse, One Missed Call, Fanboys, The Eye, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and Jumper, plus the new TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Ghost Hunters International.

It occurs to me that I've been editing this magazine for just a few months over eleven years now, starting when it was still a licensed product put out by Sovereign Media, publishers of Realms of Fantasy. It was still titled Sci-Fi Entertainment back then, and except for a gap of about a year and a half after I left Sovereign and until I started working directly for the SCI FI Channel and my new bosses decided to publish the magazine directly on their own, I've edited it since the November 1996 issue. Even subtracting out that gap, the time now exceeds the years I spent editing Science Fiction Age magazine from 1992 through 2000.

By the way, the longest running still-active continuously serving science-fiction magazine editor is Stanley Schmidt, who has been in charge of Analog Science Fiction since 1978. An amazing feat, but remarkably, even he has a few years to go to catch up with John W. Campbell, Jr., who edited the magazine from 1938 to 1971!
 
 
( 7 comments — Leave a comment )
K Tempest Bradford[info]ktempest on November 24th, 2007 11:55 pm (UTC)
I'm probably not endearing myself to you in any way when I mention that i was BORN in 1978. Ack.

I still get sad thinking about Science fiction Age. as I have told you many times, that was the first SF magazine I ever read and reading ti made me want to be an SF writer. Boo that it is gone. Boo I say!
scottedelman[info]scottedelman on November 25th, 2007 12:51 am (UTC)
Since Robert Silverberg doesn't appear to hold it against me that I was born the same year that he published his first novel, I won't hold it against you that you were born the same year I stopped writing the Captain Marvel comic-book series!

And I see your "Boo!" and raise you a "Boo hoo!"
[info]sclerotic_rings on November 26th, 2007 12:32 am (UTC)
Gads, where does the time go? I realize that I'm one of those horrible pedants who can remember not only where he was but what he was wearing on a particular date, I found it rather terrifying that you talked me into coming back to writing for the revised Sci-Fi Universe a decade ago last week. For me, this is particularly pertinent, as I'm putting my entire writing portfolio up for sale on eBay tonight, and I still had a complete run of the issues of SFU for which I was involved. Again, where did the time go: I look back on the stuff that I felt was important a decade ago and ask "Was I really that person, or can I go back to 1997 and shoot him in the head before he can cause any more damage?"
scottedelman[info]scottedelman on November 26th, 2007 05:52 pm (UTC)
Be sure to let me know what value the marketplace puts on those old copies of SFU. My fear is that bidders will instead ask you to pay them to cart them away!
[info]sclerotic_rings on November 26th, 2007 06:00 pm (UTC)
Naah: that only happens with the Altman-edited SFU. Dead seriously: the only thing more worthless on eBay than old issues of the LFP-published SFU are autographed copies of Great Birds of the Galaxy. I checked.
Jamie Todd Rubin: rocket ship[info]jamietr on November 26th, 2007 12:53 pm (UTC)
the years I spent editing Science Fiction Age magazine from 1992 through 2000

I still remember, sadly, the day I received my last issue of Science Fiction Age. I optimistically never call my collection of 46 consecutive SF AGE issues "complete" in the hope that there will be some Internet-based, grassroots effort to get the magazine restarted (hint, hint)...
scottedelman[info]scottedelman on November 26th, 2007 01:29 pm (UTC)
Hint all you want, but the name Science Fiction Age is owned by Sovereign Media, so unless I were to buy it from them (and my pockets are not that deep), or they were to feel the SF short-fiction market worth entering again (which would likely be with a different editor), I doubt that it will ever rise from the grave.

But we can both dream ...
( 7 comments — Leave a comment )